Defining and Measuring Sustainable Transport Solutions

A sustainable infrastructure improves the short- and long-term economic and environmental performance while taking the impact on society into consideration. In order to create a sustainable infrastructure there are a number of underlying components, such as transport, energy, water, communication, solid waste, etc., that needs to be addressed. For each component in turn, sustainability is influenced by different factors, such as planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance. In addition, the impact of different entities, such as governments, international organizations, local authorities, construction companies, and materials and tools manufacturers need to be considered. In this paper, the transport infrastructure and how transport solution manufacturers influence a sustainable infrastructure is discussed, and a measurement method is presented for measuring the sustainability of transport solutions.